I hope they release one in BR grime livery, complete with worthless coal, leaking packings everywhere and valves completely out of time. Being overtaken by a diesel.

Anyway, just throwing this out here: I'm in need of reference pics of the footplate. Especially the little 'cupboards' left and right of the firebox. Anyone good enough at french to try and convince someone in mulhouse to climb aboard 2.670?

TrabantDeluxeThe french compounds where considered the pinnacle of steam in there day and you can see the brilliance of the design in your modelLove the detail and texturing, the links look like a steel object, nice work can wait to see this in my engine shed.Look forward to see La France roll down the mainline to Plymouth which is where they where set to work as a comparison engine for GJ's engine development. As brilliant as the engines where they must have been a maintenance nightmare and show how sharp a mind GJ and the team at Swindon had to take the best principles of the day and create a brilliant series of engines in the 4 cylinder express engines of the GWR and ultimately the UK. Love your work keep bashing digital metal and inspiring us. Cheers Ausc.Some 1906 inspiration for John Speller's Web Pages - GWR Narrow Gauge

Hello, here's some pics. All in max I'm afraid, because real life sometimes gets in the way of getting on with my hobby. I'm nearly done with a texture sheet of brass bits. Unwrapping and packing was fun as ever. Low and High poly models where done in Max, did some sculpting to the high polys in blender, and then baked in max. dDo Legacy took care of generating some edgewear and tear. Texture base materials come from textures.com's PBR library.

I paid a lot of attention to keeping my UV's straight, and overlapping where possible as to maximise texture utilisation. I think it shows.

Well there's an overview. As always with old engines, you'll never find documentation on how exactly things where. Is this accurate? Probably not. But I think it captures the essence of the older style of French engines.

Here's the bits and bobs for le mecanicien to fiddle with. The intercepting valve is located to the left of the air brake. There's the distinct double regulator, and there's also a sanding valve. The large brass handwheel controls the variable exhaust nozzle.

I've read in a US periodical these engines where fitted with smokebox vacuum gauges. I've never seen such a thing on drawings, pictures or any reference in French literature. Is it reasonable to assume that this gauge would be installed for an experiment or showing off to the murican reporter on board?

Well there's the air pump regulator and lubricator. Bog standard bits that you'll find on any air pump. Behind there we have the relief valve on the reciever (i.e. low-pressure steam chest) set at about 90 PSi.